We Are All Reborn
by Sara Wolfe
Summary: He has no past and no memory. She's got a singing blue box. It's the Doctor and Rose as you've never seen them, before.


**Author's Note:** This is for the doctor_rose_fix Spring Fix-athon, on LJ. It's also my first foray into Doctor Who fic. I know (kinda) where I want to go with this fic. But I have no idea if it's going to work.

* * *

His last memory is of fire.

Ashes fall from the sky around him as the world burns. He stares down at his hands soaked with blood, stares down at the child's body crumpled on the ground in front of him. A little girl with curly ringlets of brown hair, and a hole in her chest the size of his fist. He'd tried to save her, tried to stop the bleeding, but there was just too much. There was nothing that he could do except hold the child as she died, trying to give some, meager comfort in her last seconds.

He failed.

He stumbles away from her body, trying to ignore the tremors that wracked his body. Trying to ignore the little voice in the back of his mind that chanted, over and over, _"Your fault. This is all your fault."_

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, as he staggers along the burning street. "I'm so sorry. So very sorry."

He doesn't know what he's saying, anymore. The words just pour out of him like a litany, a prayer for forgiveness – when he doesn't deserve forgiveness in the first place.

People scream as he passes them, voices hoarse and weak. He tries to help them, like he tried to help the child, but again and again, he fails. They're beyond his help. They're dying.

His people are dying.

His only hope for salvation sits in the middle of the burning world, untouched by the flames that surround it. Fire licks at the walls that look like wood, and in his mind, She screams in pain, a high, thin sound. But, She stays steady, stays strong, and he takes what little comfort he can from Her strength.

The doors open for him as he falls heavily against Her outer shell, and he stumbles out of the acrid, burning air, into blessedly cool comfort. He takes a deep breath, pain searing through his lungs, his heartsbeat wild and erratic in his chest. But he fights through the pain, pushes it away as inconsequential in the face of more important matters.

"We can save them," he gasps out, leaning against the console, and he can hear Her agreement humming in his mind. "We can still save them."

He ignores the voices of his teachers, telling him about paradoxes, and Reapers, and the death of the universe. Without his people, without his world, there is no universe. There's just a blank, terrifying nothingness. Alone, forever.

Alone scares him.

"Got to go back," he mumbles under his breath, as he tweaks levers, and stabs at buttons, and pushes Her into limits he's never dared breach, before. "Got to go back, got to go back-"

The Vortex whirls around them, a deadly, beautiful song filling the air. He runs around the console, fervently working and praying at the same time. To who, he doesn't know, but even for him, there has to be some kind of higher power he can appeal to. Someone who can deliver him from his current misery.

Sweat and blood drip into his eyes, and he distractedly wipes the film away. The air is thick and heavy, again, and he can't breathe. He pushes aside the discomfort, though, to focus on the problem at hand. It doesn't matter that he hurts, because he's going to save everyone. And that will make everything better.

When She slams to a stop, almost knocking him off his feet, he knows that they've landed. Pushing himself away from the console, he yanks the door open. And then he stares at the burning world in stunned disbelief.

He failed. Again.

"I can still fix this," he declares, shutting the door, and shutting out the sight of the destruction surrounding him. "I _can_ do this."

He hears Her worried whine in the back of his mind, silently begging for him to stop. But he can't stop; if he stops, they're all dead. And they can't be dead.

So he tries again.

And when that fails, again.

And again, and again, so many times that he loses track. His world narrows down to the swirling lights in front of his eyes, the squealing of gears as She pushes herself to the limit, and the fire. The never-ending fire.

When he stumbles out into the burning world for the last time, he knows that this is it. He has no more strength, no tricks left up his sleeve. He barely has the energy to curl up on the ground in front of Her doors, ready to die along with the people he'd failed. He begs Her to leave, not to perish with him, but She's even more stubborn than he is, and She won't leave him. And in the end, he's grateful for her presence, for the solid warmth at his back.

He stares at the flames until his eyes water, and then stares beyond even that. The white-hot light sears itself into the backs of his eyelids, black spots dancing in front of his eyes. It hurts to breathe, every breath stabbing into him with the force of a million knives. His body is heavy and cumbersome, and he can no longer move.

He can hear Her voice as a distant buzzing in the back of his mind, and he faintly makes out her words. She's begging him to come back inside, to save himself. But, even if he wanted to, he couldn't. He has nothing left.

He closes his eyes, finally succumbing to the seductive darkness calling to him. And he hears the howl of a wolf as he dies.


End file.
